The Met suspends James Levine over new claims

The Metropolitan Opera has cancelled all engagements with James Levine, its longest serving chief conductor, latterly its conductor emeritus.

The action was prompted by a report in the New York Times that three men had come forward with allegations that Levine had engaged them in masturbation in the 1960s and 1970s when they were teenagers. One of the three is Ashok Pai, whose claim was first reported in the NY Post.

The Met issued this statement during the night:

‘We are suspending our relationship with James Levine, pending an investigation, following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by Mr. Levine that took place from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, including the earlier part of his conducting career at the Met. Mr. Levine will not be involved in any Met activities, including conducting scheduled performances at the Met this season. “While we await the results of the investigation, based on these new news reports, the Met has made the decision to act now,” said Peter Gelb, Met General Manager, whose actions are fully supported by the leadership of the Met Board and its Executive Committee. “This is a tragedy for anyone whose life has been affected.”

In each of the cases, Levine, now 74, is alleged to have initiated sexual activity with very young men. It is no clear whether any of them was below the age of consent in the state where the events took place. In the one known instance, Ashok Pai’s, where a complaint was made to the police, the prosecuting authorities decided that the matter was covered under the statute of limitations. Levine has not been interviewed by police in any of these three cases.

These are the facts that have come to light.

It is alleged that Levine used his authority as an older man in a position of authority towards young musicians to engage them in sexual activity.

The allegations raise serious questions for the Met, where Levine has appeared for 47 years, as well as the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland where he was invited to head a youth orchestra, and other organisations.

The young Levine

Levine is credited with raising the Met to standards of unparallelled excellence. The foremost American-born conductor since Leonard Bernstein, he has been hampered in the past decade by severe illness that has confined him to conducting from a wheelchair. He will not, as planned, conduct a new production of Tosca on New Year’s Eve.

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Question: what does the law in the US say? What constitutes a misdemeanor or crime, and what is legal and maybe just morally considered wrong?
Is consensual sex between a 16 year old and an adult forbidden by law in the US?
Depends on state law as well?
Sorry if this is obvious to you, but to the observer from outside the US this is anything but clear.

The age of consent varies by state, ranging from 16 to 18. For people in positions of authority or leadership over children (like teachers,) the age of consent is often raised too 18. Many states do not place a statute of limitations on sexual child abuse, but in Illinois it is 20 years. This means that Levine is no longer liable for the case reported in the NY Post. In New York, there is no statute of limitation, so any crimes committed there are still punishable.

Thank you. So the Illinois case (16 year old teenager) has a statute of limitation, despite the state law sets 17 years (today) to be the age of consent. So no legal case there, unless the consent is contested.
Age of consent in Michigan (today) is 16. So a 17 year old might have a hard time proving that it was not consensual possibly?
NY also 17 legal age for consent. Hmmm… Could this all amount to legally pretty much nothing, unless someone below the age of consent steps forward?

I haven’t checked the laws in those states, but since Levine was in a teaching position, or something similar, the age of consent might be 18. If the rumors are true, younger people might be coming forward. The rumored cover ups and pay offs might also lead to obstruction and complicity charges, in the off chance a DA really pursues this. Obstruction and complicity directly or indirectly connected to the Met would be a far greater issue than Levine’s behavior. I suspect the higher administration at the Met right now is busier than a beehive…

Mr. LeBrecht: I noticed that you have mentioned two cover-ups by the Metropolitan Opera Board of Directors in order to evade charges being brought against J. Levine. According to my understanding, the Met Board convinced the NY Times to not report an arrest of Levine in Philadelphia. A police report of the incident may still be discoverable. Second: A settlement was paid to a victim and his family in order to silence the abuse of an underage black child. Research that, if so you are inclined.

I fear Levine’s remarkable musical legacy will be completely overshadowed by these so called ‘revelations’ of sexual abuse.
It wasn’t like Lenny who had a predeliction for good looking young men – they were never children and whatever extra-partitura dalliances occurred were clearly consensual.
Even more worrying is the apparent complicity of the Met’s Board in paying large sums of hush money to a number of alleged victims.
Levine probably won’t survive this but I doubt the Met’s finances will either.

He fawned all over Carlos Kleiber too but the beautiful heterosexual Kleiber wasn’t interested; in fact, he took a woman (not his wife) on any holidays where Bernstein and Zeffirelli were going to be. Human shields!!! (I’d have put my hand up for that job!!)

Yes, but wouldn’t you then have been a wanton, a harlot, a perv, enabling(!)
the beautiful, heterosexual, and powerful(!) Carlos Kleiber to betray, yet again, his devout and long-suffering wife, while pretending to shield CK from the old preeevert LB?
Surely the great mass of mankind would condemn such behavior as much as the visitors to this site with their hoked up ha ha moral outrage delight in kicking Levine while he is down.
I think, Miss Sue, you shouldn’t throw stones at others when your own fetid fantasies indicate a behavior equally close to the pavement.

What really irks me in all this is the mendacity. Levine’s alleged proclivities were known and talked about in the musical world for very many years. However, so many people – music festivals, orchestras, record companies, agents,individual soloists etc.benefitted from his and his entourage’s largesse, that they decided to keep quiet and sweep the facts under the table. Only now that Levine is a wounded beast do these cowards come out of the woodwork. There is absolutely no way to condone his actions, but the fact that only now action is being taken is also a sad indictment of music world morals.

Mercifully and thankfully I was spared such appalling behaviour – but I do recognise opportunism and mendacity when I see it, and those who thought it better to turn a blind eye as long as they had something to gain should examine their consciences now.

It takes two to play the game.I know many,mostly heterosexual singers who started those games,hoping for a break.When the teasing got a little out of hand,well…..the price is very high….Some were willing to pay the price and sell their body and soul,some not…..

When the UBS Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra was founded, a researcher contacted a number of notable people in the music industry, ostensibly to canvas them on the naming of the orchestra.

But the call was not about the name. It was about its potential music director.

Conversation was promptly diverted towards my opinion of Maestro Levine. It was then directed towards my thoughts about Maestro Levine being put in charge of a youth orchestra.

Then a dance commenced in which I tried to make it very clear why I would have grave doubts about putting Maestro Levine in charge of a youth orchestra, without mentioning the decades of incidents long-talked-about in the industry.

Why could I and – I presume – many more in the industry not be more overt? Why am I still writing anonymously, with Levine now exposed?

Those outside the industry, those apologists for Levine, simply have no idea.

I think some balance must be given here. I attended one of the early Verbier Festivals and marveled at the quality of the orchestra. Auditions had earlier been held in various countries but Levine took no part. Also the age range of the musicians was made very clear from the outset – no younger than 17 or older than 29. So it was definitely not a Youth Orchestra of school students. In attendance were a lot of coaches from the Met and other rchestras! My gut feel is that any impropriety would have been quite difficult in that village and in those specific surroundings. I hope I am not wrong.

If anything happened at Verbier, it didn’t matter. You know why? Because Europeans are much more mature about sexual matters than tight wound up Puritanical Americans. who at 66 years old still feel shame about their first masturbation experience with another guy at the age of 17.

Levine should move to Switzerland. Life is fine there. A bit expensive, but he can afford it.

And yet America is on some respects less puritanical about sexual matters….take a look at “Abercrombie and Fitch” catalogues which are/were more sexualised/homoerotic than any European equivalent. It’s not a brand I approve of by the way as it promotes a very limited notion of what is deemed to be beautiful.

Levine obviously has twisted and infantile sexuality and needed psychotherapy decades ago. But homosexuality is probably so rife in the classical music world that the thresh hold for what is abuse has most likely been long ago blurred. Male homosexuals are known to be more promiscuous than female, and that just adds to the secretive culture.

Yet none of this is of relevance here. The only issue that would elevate this issue from a morally despicable one – from the ever fuzzy mainstream moral perspective – to a legally relevant one, would be the question, if Levine had illegal sexual relationships with those young men. It is possibly so, but do we know? Not yet, based on the information so far. And can we judge before we know?

How is it ‘known’ that male homosexuals are more promiscuous than female? In much the same way that many here are now saying with absolute certainty exactly what was ‘known’ about Levine and who covered it up? Hindsight is a remarkable thing.

There are now so many comments on this matter that I wonder if the name of Ronald Wilford has come up. Wilford was the extremely powerful Chairman of Columbia Artists Management Inc., a man well known in the business for calling in the lawyers whenever one of his artists was involved – or threatened to break a contract and defect to another agency. Levine was his client from the get go and it is certain that it was partly through Wilford’s influence that he ascended the Met ladder to the post of Artistic Director. Levine was his only conductor client who remained as the head of one organisation up the road from the CAMI offices for many decades. Wilford surely knew his client as well as anyone and no doubt protected him. He must have known of the rumours.

The only reason for raising this now, for Wilford died two years ago, is that another of Wilford’s proteges was Peter Gelb whom Wilford brought into CAMI. If Wilford and his colleagues at CAMI were aware of possible improprieties in respect of Levine, it is surely highly unlikely that these were not known also to Gelb well before he took over the management of the Met. How much did Gelb know and for how long are surely questions that now have to be asked.

Only suspended? These folks continue to mock the law and common sense, don’t they? The NY Times article published today about additional allegations of sexual abuse on the part of Levine, the men have come forward and not anonymously. Two of them even consented to have their photographs published in the article. I feel nothing but heartbreak for these men and what they have had to endure for decades. Not to mention the emotional pain and humiliation because of the abuse but because of exposing and opening themselves for the world to see. It must be harrowing. I hope they remain strong through this.

1 – Those of you who are fixated on the age of the victims and age of consent are missing the point. This is not primarily about the age of the persons involved (but see 1A below). This is primarily about a person in a position of power using that position and that power to intimidate another person sexually. This can range from sexual harassment (e.g., unwanted, uninvited comments about one’s body, catcalls, forcing conversation about sex) to sexual assault (unwanted, nonconsensual sexual contact of any degree). If you read the victim’s account in a thoughtful manner, you will see that the young man felt afraid of Levine’s power and authority – felt that he had no choice but to comply. I sense no enjoyment in any of it.

1A – That said, the fact that Levine chose young people as his victims DOES make this about child abuse as well as sexual intimidation, and that makes it an even worse crime. Perhaps child abusers choose young people because they more easily intimidated into silence. As to age of consent, that is a legal concept (based on outmoded marriage laws), and does not magically imply maturity. If any of you has 16- or 17-year old son, daughter, friend, relative — would you be OK with a much older person initiating and perpetuating a coercive sexual relationship with that young person, simply because the law defines “age of consent” at 16 or 17? Think about that. Really think about that.

2 – Those of you who quibble about statutes of limitations and wonder “why did he wait so long to report this?” have no idea of the pervasive guilt, shame, and fear that perpetrators cultivate in their victims. The victims are, LITERALLY, afraid to speak up. Perpetrators often make their victims feel responsible, guilty, and ashamed, and threaten them with consequences if they report the abuse. NOT TO MENTION that our society still tends to blame, doubt, and shame victims and insulate, exonerate the powerful people who perpetrate these crimes. Look at what some of you have written here about this victim – shame on you. You are part of the culture that allows this to happen.

3 – Those of you who cry “What about due process?!” have no idea of how the law works. Public conversation is not a court of law. If a case goes forward, then due process will come into play. And if you are paying attention to the global conversation here (see 2, above) then you will understand the value of this public conversation in getting this issue out into the open. Sexual abuse and harassment happens because the perpetrators are rarely called out.

4 – Those of you who are fixated on the homosexual aspect of this have no clue. If Levine happens to be gay, so what. It would be just as egregious if his orientation and preferred victims were from any point on the gender spectrum. This is not about sex, it’s about power. Sure, the immediate interest might have been sexual, but in the end, this is about using POWER to coerce sex. The interest, arousal, and gratification often have more to do with power and control than sexual feelings. He happens to be gay. If he’d been straight, we’d be seeing stories from women. No difference.

5 – Those of you who are sceptical about the growing flood of revelations, thinking that victims are trying to get on some sort of bandwagon, clearly you have forgotten the fear of speaking up if you think you’re the only one who suffered an indignity. But when a person with a similar experience IS brave enough to speak out, then others draw courage from that to say “Me, too. It happened to me, too. And now I want to help draw attention to this problem by demonstrating how pervasive it is.” That’s what you’re seeing now on a daily basis. If you had been bullied as a child, might you have been too afraid to ask for help? Especially if you thought you were the only one? But if a classmate shared the experience, you might then be willing to say, “Me, too, he’s bullying me, too, let’s tell the teacher.” There’s safety in numbers.

5A – And to that I must add — You will of course, notice, that the perpetrators are (almost always) men. As long as men remain in charge of Everything, they will continue to behave in this way BECAUSE THEY CAN. The male-dominated infrastructures provide cover, pay their damages, appoint them as music directors, renew their gazillion-dollar entertainment contracts, ignore victims, or make it impossible for victims to come forward.

6 – If you find yourself blaming the victims, questioning their accounts, finding excuses for the perpetrators, or being willing to say “guys will be guys” then you are part of the problem. You are an enabler.

James, you know full well that “what’s on the program” is not the only issue here, nor will it be with any of the many, many predators in classical music who are about to be exposed. I don’t know what the purpose is of you playing at this wide-eyed, all-about-the-music confusion, but if this is your response to reports of abuse–and if you’re happy giving your ticket money to any of these predators–just get out of the comments section.

Your account is a bit too simplistic.
Particularly point 1.
It is not clear to us outsiders, if power abuse for sexual gratification is the main crime.
It might well be that is was a consensual matter, between Levine looking for sexual gratification with juvenile males, and those young males, looking for some narcissistic gratification in the shadow of a hyped great artist. A very common mutual relationship, as neurotic as it may be.
This doesn’t render his motives any better or justified. But it makes it a bit more complex as far as abuse of power and illegal doing are concerned. It’s a grey zone.
If we also get testimonies by minors who can not give consent in the sense of the law, then we talk again. Those would be clearly what you state. But not the cases with young men of old enough age to give consent. I’m trying to bring some reason to an irrational debate.

Those who have known forever about Levine’s behavior are aware that he’s not unique, so stay tuned: the many victims of a conductor based in Northern California and Florida will soon step forward as well.

I would not be surprised at all to see this. He ran his tenure like a gay harem, of which I have personal experience.

Also, when will the press come for Santa Fe Opera and its fortunately now dead creator and conductor who was a miserable abusive human being who had serious sexual misconduct issues with gay men over the course of his tenure and was protected by awful people still working there?

To those of you elitists who attempted to excuse the perverted well known behavior of Levine in posts, I do not know how you can look yourselves in the mirror?
As a grad student at a well know music University in Manhattan in the late 1970s this so called secret was well known
Unless the Mets board lived under a rock they knew this too.
It is way past time that Levine pay for his crimes, and so should those including Gelb and the cadre of in house Met attorneys who in any way helped cover this up through many decades.
It is time to clean house of the Met upper management and start fresh
I am traveling to the Met this month from my home in Virginia and I am quite sure I will be overwhelmed by the stench of perversion coming from the orchestra pit.
As Ivanka Trump said
There is a special place in hell for people who harm children.
Rot there Levine and those who enabled you

You are right about the money.
But not doing it again after you did it once might be even more effective against the pain. But then you could also do it again for years, and then later claim you were hurt so badly.
The human psyche is an abyss of horror.
How ever far we are thinking. It is not far enough, compared to how far the subconscious can drive us.

Bill. Yes it does as our Secretary of State said
No one speaks for me.
Stop being a political hack and fool.
Typical enablers like you Bill are what’s whats wrong with the Met. Levine. And America
Levine is a pervert and these allegations have existed four decades.
Levine should rot in that special place in hell

So, you’ve been alright all these years giving your money to the Met knowing full well what was going on with Levine? And you hadn’t spoken up about it? I’d say that by extension, you’re one of those complicit “elites” as well. And you’re still willing to go to that place with the “stench of perversion”, as you describe it, and give them your money now that this out is in the open? Spare me…

I’m not defending Levine; quite to the contrary, I think he should go to prison if these allegations are true, but to say that somehow there have been these “elites” protecting Levine while we have the President of the United States, a man who openly boasted of sexual assault, enabling a child molester by his endorsement of him just this morning, is pretty hypocritical. It would appear everyone is doing it for their own ends, not just “elites”, which is a pretty coded word in political talk nowadays.

And by the way, Ivanka called out Moore, but she is also a member of the administration whose leader, her father, is openly enabling a child molester. So, unless she calls out her father and takes some other action for doing so, such as resigning in protest, her words ring rather hollow. She is complicit as far as I am concerned. Talk is cheap.

Mr. Levine’ proclivities for boys has been known for years and years. It has been covered up by various upper management people at orchestras, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Met. This is no surprise. They should all be ashamed for allowing a pediophile to skate free.

I wonder whether I am alone in having formed the impression that James Levine became the focus of something of a cult of personality at the Met and that to a considerable extent Levine and the Met became identified with each other. Whenever I have seen a Met Live in HD broadcast when Levine has been conducting I’ve observed that he is invariably referred to as “Maestro James Levine”. I know that “maestro” is a title commonly used for conductors, but I have never heard anybody refer to Antonio Pappano as “Maestro Antonio Pappano”. I did once hear him referred to, in his presence, as “Maestro Tony”, and I wonder whether Levine would tolerate being referred to humorously as “Maestro Jimmy”. I remember one Live in HD broadcast in which the extra features comprised film of Levine in rehearsal together with clips of the great and the good of the opera world eulogising his career in panegyrical fashion. I did eventually begin to feel that the purpose of the broadcast was to serve as propaganda for the cult of Levine’s personality.

In part, the reason for this is presumably simply that Levine’s tenure at the Met lasted so long that few people under the age of 60 or so will remember a time when he was not the Met’s music director. Levine is the Met in much the same way that Queen Elizabeth II is, for the vast majority of people, the only British head of state they have ever known (as somebody born during her reign it is strange to think that my great-grandparents would have outlived half a dozen monarchs) or, perhaps more appositely, for people of my generation John Paul II was the Catholic Church.

Bill if you refrence slippeddisc you will see these rumors were out on the site years,ago.
I have spoken on this online through the year’s.
I grew up in Manhattan and now am retired on my farm in the Shenandoah Valley.
When I travel to Manhattan several times a year I do attend the Met but I choosen not to attend dates when Levine conducts and I have followed this self made rule for several years
I am not going to let one individual rob me of my passion for opera
I am pleased you are not excusing Levine.
As far as POLITICS is concerned we are sadly living in a very dividend country so let’s be civil and agree to disagree on President Trump
Merry Christmas

Jimmy Levine was emblematic of america. A failed empire of 330 million used car salesmen. A hustler, huckster, and expansionist who’s only “narrative” was get money. He hid in the insular world of the met protected by others and did not hire “unknown” non gay folks. That was well known.
As a typical american hustler, the levine cult was fanned by wealthy clueless or (willfully ignorant-Heffernan) “patrons” who could not or would not concern themselves with reality of what Levine was. A sexual predator who needs to be in prison and the Met, BSO, etc…brought to their knees for their willful and tacitly complicit in this sexual defiant.
Good luck asking the sheep for that annual end of yr begging for $ notice.

Also, Lenny Bernstein-same thing. But the corporate hustlers at those us “arts” groups need to sell tickets, promote elitist galas, clubs, festivals for Lenny’s 100yr anniversaire. What a sad joke. Those donated monies to “support” the arts will be supported american shyster lawyers at least $1200/h to protect the liars, hide the truth, and give smiling lip service to maintain the hustle.

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